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KUALA LUMPUR, March 23 – A total of 9,360 women have participated in the MyKasih Kapital programme for women entrepreneurs up to March 10 this year, since its launch about a year ago.
These women are now running their own online businesses such as dropship cosmetics, healthy food, fast food, bakeries, beauty spas and sewing services, said Women, Family and Community Development Minister Rina Harun.
“MyKasih Kapital is an additional incentive by the government, which was announced in conjunction with the International Women’s Day celebrations on March 8, 2021 as an injection of business capital for women who were struggling with financial difficulties, to help them generate income for their families as they faced the challenges of the current Covid-19 pandemic.
“This one-off incentive with a capital of RM500 was given as a start-up effort to encourage women to do business and help their families by conducting their business through e-commerce platforms, dropship and other types of business,” she said in her Dewan Negara written reply to Senator Ahmad Azam Hamzah on March 21.
Ahmad wanted to know the number of beneficiaries of the MyKasih Kapital programme and how many had successfully implemented their online businesses through the programme.
According to Rina, participants of the programme also had to participate in a course under the Program Keusahawanan Wanita Bangkit, which was conducted online and in-person, to qualify to receive the incentive.
The course was implemented by her ministry in cooperation with Institut Keusahawanan Negara (INSKEN), PERKESO, Agensi Kaunseling dan Pengurusan Kredit (AKPK) and Maxis.


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Kampala, Uganda – The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) hosted a Women Leaders’ Dialogue to explore how women and women-led enterprises can best utilize opportunities within the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and how women’s leadership can help to address development challenges in sectors of strategic interest to Uganda. The dialogue forum also created opportunities to showcase Made in Uganda products and for women leaders in business to connect with young and upcoming women entrepreneurs.
The Women Leader’s Dialogue was attended by UNDP Assistant Administrator and Director, Regional Bureau for Africa Ms. Ahunna Eziakonwa, UN Resident Coordinator Ms. Susan Ngongi Namondo, Hon. Minister for Gender, Labour and Social Development Betty Amongi, H.E. South Africa High Commissioner to Uganda Lulu Xingwana, UNDP Resident Representative Ms. Elsie Attafuah, and a host of senior officials from Government of Uganda and the private sector.
The UNDP Regional Director, Ms. Ahunna Eziakonwa, challenged Ugandan women in business stating that ultimately, it will take the women of Uganda to make the AfCFTA a reality. “We should pivot our efforts to actions that ensure that women are utilizing the opportunity presented in the One African Market. Our examples today confirm that there is action on the ground, that things can work, but also that we need much more action – concerted action – to ensure that women can transcend in their success to the next level.”
UNDP Regional Bureau for Africa Strategy Advisor Dr. Joy Kategekwa led a discussion on the AfCFTA, encouraging reflections on the role of women in trade and strategies to elevate women’s participation and integration within the One African Market.
“We have a unique opportunity in the AfCFTA,” explained Dr. Joy Kategekwa. “Through the AfCFTA we can draw people into the economy and do so in a manner where the resources that this county has work for Ugandans, and through that, that Uganda contributes to advancing the Sustainable Development Goals.”
Intra-African trade offers a unique opportunity to generate employment, unlock market opportunities, capital and financing necessary to expand economic growth opportunities, drive technological advancements, and accelerate the achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Agenda 2063 of the African Union.
The UNDP Resident Representative, Ms. Elsie Ettafuah, highlighted the significance of AfCFTA in accelerating the growth of intra-African trade and the use of trade as an engine of growth and sustainable development in Africa. Noting that UNDP has empowered women and youth-led enterprises in Uganda through skilling, grants and access to regional. “By opening markets in key sectors, the AfCFTA is creating opportunities to harness trade-led growth through increased product diversification and competitiveness,” she added.
Through the AfCFTA, a free trade area has been established among 55 African Union Member States. According to the World Bank, the AfCFTA can boost intra-African trade by 52.3 percent by 2025, increase Africa's income by up to US$ 450 billion by 2035, and lift 30 million Africans out of extreme poverty.
For more information:
Ashley Prigent, UNDP Uganda, firstname.lastname@example.org
About UNDP’s support to Uganda aligned to the realisation of AfCFTA:
In Uganda, UNDP supports women and youth-led SMEs through skilling, grants, and access to local, regional, and international markets. UNDP promoted cross-border trade for women, particularly targeting women and youth led SMEs to participate in AfCFTA. Some of the initiatives include:
- Collaboration with Uganda Airlines for promotion of African trade and export opportunities. In October 2023, Uganda Airlines launched new routes to Mumbai and Lagos aimed to ease connectivity, promote tourism, and enhance Uganda’s export offer within the context of the AfCFTA.
- Lagos Trade mission by 40 Women in Business. UNDP supported 40 Women in Business to travel to Lagos and explore business to business linkages as well as secure deals with companies in Lagos and the larger West African market.
- Trade and Business Forums. UNDP supported convening of two Trade and Business Forums with India and Nigeria ahead of the inaugural flights as a platform to present and discuss the opportunities that these new destinations offer.
- Women and Youth entrepreneurship, technology adoption, and digital skills upgrade. UNDP enhanced these capacities through provision of Youth for Business grants and establishment of the self-paced e-learning portal that enabled access information on Trade opportunities. Some of the women-led initiatives that have benefited include Endiro, a coffee value addition company, has been able to expand into Nigeria; Akello Banker and Kuunda, fintech companies, have expanded into Burundi and Nigeria.
- Economic empowerment of over 3,146 survivors of Gender Based Violence to enable them strengthen their own abilities to create livelihoods and ultimately wealth. This was done in Amudat, Kitgum, Tororo, Kasese and Kampala. Programmes offered included skilling, provision of start-up kits, small grants, equipping women artisanal miners with stone crushers to boost value addition, productivity, and profitability.

domain: news


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POS terminal supplier Verifone has entered “a must-have phase for chip-and-PIN almost everywhere around the globe,” CEO Douglas Bergeron told analysts during its fourth quarter earnings call, Bank Technology News reports. “I think we are reaching a point where more and more people are saying they don’t know what the future is for sure, but they know near field communication is going to be part of it and they don’t want to be flat-footed when that day arrives,” said Bergeron.
- General Motors to replace car keys with face biometrics?
- ST provides brands with guidance on how best to implement NFC tags
- UK government publishes digital identity framework
- NFC Forum explores the role of NFC in mobility-as-a-service applications
- Accor to let hotel guests access their rooms with their smartphone
This article is more than nine years old


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After the market value has shrunk, Tencent and Ali’s valuation repair may start at the end of the year
Compared with the historical highs of stock prices set last year, the current stock prices of Tencent and Alibaba have shrunk by about 54% and 70% respectively, and their valuations have returned to four years ago. Some investors pointed out that there are irrational factors in this valuation level, and expected that by the end of this year or next year, technology “unicorns” represented by Tencent and Ali will embark on the road of valuation repair.
As of August 17, the stock prices of Tencent Holdings, Alibaba’s Chinese concept stocks and Hong Kong stocks closed at HK$303.2, US$89.77, and HK$90.35 (before resumption), respectively. Compared with the historical highs set in the past two years, the cumulative decline was 59.42%, 71.89%, 70.80%. According to the total market value of the company, Tencent has shrunk from HK$7.17 trillion on the highest price day to the current HK$2.92 trillion; the total market value of Alibaba’s Chinese stocks and Hong Kong stocks has also dropped from the highest of US$850.799 billion and HK$6.6 trillion to 2377.23 trillion. billion and HK$1.91 trillion.
Regarding this round of adjustment of Tencent and Ali’s stock prices, Chen Jia, an independent international strategy researcher, said, “Since this year, Tencent and Ali’s annual reports and quarterly reports have been unsatisfactory, but it is not a coincidence that the revenue and net profit of the two leading companies have turned inflection points. According to the time node, in Before the data of this fiscal year was released, both companies had a series of actions, including shrinking financial investment, technological layout and human capital. The market believes that, as a global Chinese-funded enterprise listed overseas, under the condition that there is no major globalization event, This trend is difficult to reverse in the short term, so that market expectations are lowered.”
Ma Zhe, the founding partner of Beijing Zhonghai Fulin Investment Management Co., Ltd., told Red Weekly that from the perspective of the rear-view mirror, Tencent and Alibaba’s stock prices will rise. Deep retracement is reasonable. There have been some issues with reporting on both platforms that have persisted for several quarters. On the micro level, there are threats from ByteDance and Douyin; on the macro level, fluctuations in the economic situation, policy guidance and control have also suppressed the company’s growth.
However, in the process of companies slashing valuations, there is often a phenomenon of overkill. Are there similar phenomena in the current stock prices of Tencent and Alibaba? In this regard, Zhao Jian, dean of the Caesar Research Institute, pointed out to “Red Weekly” that the valuations of Tencent and Ali are far lower than the fundamentals of China’s economic development. “Beast”, the current valuation has irrational factors or is influenced by emotional factors, because the market is over-discounted to its current uncertain valuation. We can see that Tencent’s market value has almost returned to 4 years ago, Ali was 5 years ago, but there are many similar targets in the world that have doubled, which is obviously unreasonable.”
Zhao Jian pointed out, “My thoughts are similar to Duan Yongping’s, that is, China’s economy There is no doubt about the background and development potential, but there are some uncertainties in the process of transformation, and historical experience shows that these uncertainties will always be corrected. My expectation is the end of this year or next year. And once there are no constraints of these factors, technology unicorns represented by Tencent and Ali will embark on the road of valuation repair and re-show their value.”
The chief overseas researcher of a securities research institute also has a similar view. She told “Red Weekly”, “I think these two companies are undervalued, and the current market value does not reflect their value. However, the Hong Kong stock market and the Chinese stock market are a relatively complex market. On the one hand, they are affected by geopolitics and the Federal Reserve. On the other hand, the impact of raising interest rates and shrinking the balance sheet will also be affected by the internal environment. Therefore, their market value does not entirely depend on the fundamentals of the company’s own operations.”
She judged, “I think these two companies may have some more recently. Fluctuations, it is unclear whether the Fed’s interest rate hike and balance sheet reduction have been fully reflected, and the progress of PCAOB audit and supervision negotiations should continue to be tracked. However, in the long run, there will still be a gradual stabilization process. We expect that from the fourth quarter of this year to next year, Hong Kong stocks and The Internet sector may have relatively large opportunities. Because the internal and external environment will become more clear in the future, the implementation of some landmark rectification cases will release some positive signals, and the overall vitality and operation of the company will gradually return to normal. change.”
If it is conservatively calculated according to the company’s cash flow creation level in the next ten years, that is, predict future operating income → predict future net profit through past operating net interest rate (operating income × operating net interest rate) → predict operation through net profit and the weight of past operating cash flow Cash flow (net profit × operating cash flow weight) → predict future non-cash costs through the ratio of past non-cash costs to operating income (operating income × non-cash costs to operating income ratio) → calculate free cash flow through the above (Operating cash flow – non-cash cost), how will the value of Tencent and Ali perform when the price-to-earnings ratio remains unchanged?
”Red Weekly” combined with historical data and found that the average price-earnings ratio of Tencent Holdings was about 39.92 times. As of the close of August 17, the price-earnings ratio was 14.13 times, and the total market value was 2.92 trillion Hong Kong dollars. If the company’s historical average valuation is used for statistics, assuming that the company’s net profit in 2022 reverses the downward trend and only maintains a flat profit, the company is expected to achieve a total market value of about 3.18 trillion Hong Kong dollars. If the annual performance growth rate is 10% (this has only happened in two years in Tencent’s history, and the growth rate in the first five years is set at 10%, and the growth rate in the next five years is set at 5%), the profit scale in the next ten years is calculated. , the company’s profit will reach about 462.114 billion yuan by 2031. Combined with the current price-earnings ratio of 14.13 times, the valuation is also expected to be as high as 6.53 trillion Hong Kong dollars.
Similarly, “Red Weekly” conservatively assumes that Ali’s revenue growth rate will be 10% in the first 5 years of the next 10 years and 5% in the next 5 years, then the company’s operating income in fiscal year 2023 and fiscal year 2032 will reach 10145.35 100 million yuan and 1986.038 billion yuan. Conservatively assuming that Ali’s operating net profit margin will be 10% in the next 10 years, the company’s net profit attributable to the parent in fiscal year 2023 and fiscal year 2032 will reach 101.453 billion yuan and 198.604 billion yuan respectively. Conservatively assume that the proportion of operating cash flow in the same period to the net profit attributable to the parent and the proportion of non-cash costs (depreciation and amortization) in operating income will be 200% and 5% respectively in the next 10 years. The operating cash flow in fiscal year 2032 will reach 202.907 billion yuan and 397.208 billion yuan respectively, and the non-cash costs will reach 50.727 billion yuan and 99.302 billion yuan respectively. Then, Ali’s free cash flow in fiscal year 2023 and fiscal year 2032 will reach 152.18 billion yuan and 297.906 billion yuan respectively, with a compound annual growth rate of 7.75%. It is conservatively assumed that after 10 years, Ali’s free cash flow growth rate will drop to 5%. Combined with the 10% discount rate of stable companies, Ali’s valuation in the next 10 years will be about 3.46 trillion yuan, equivalent to 3.01 trillion yuan. In Hong Kong dollars (calculated at 1 RMB = 1.15 Hong Kong dollars, the same below), the sustainable value is also as high as 2.19 trillion yuan.
According to the calculations of some institutions, the valuation level of Tencent and Ali in the next 10 years will be higher, and the overall conservative valuation will have a room for 1 to 3 times. However, some investors emphasized that the key to investing is to be correct, not accurate.
Tencent releases “steady growth” signal, Ali e-commerce and cloud computing business can support “valuation target”
Tencent executives said this week that the company is on track to grow again in the coming quarters. In terms of Ali, assuming that Ali has only two businesses in China, commerce and cloud, and the operating net profit margin in the next 10 years is still 10%, after calculation, its current valuation is still lower than the actual value of the company.
According to Tencent’s second-quarter financial report released on August 17, in the first half of the year, the company achieved revenue of 269.505 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 1.94%; net profit was 42.032 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 53.48%. Looking at the data of the second quarter, the revenue of 134.034 billion yuan fell by 3.83% year-on-year and 1.06% month-on-month compared with the second quarter of last year; the net profit of 18.619 billion yuan fell by 56.28% year-on-year and 20.48% month-on-month. Looking at the company’s second-quarter financial report, “reducing costs and increasing efficiency” has become the keyword of the full text. The company said that in the second quarter of this year, it will actively withdraw from non-core businesses, tighten marketing expenses, and reduce operating expenses. In the future, the company will focus on improving business efficiency and increasing business efficiency. New revenue streams, including video feed ads, while continuing to drive innovation through R&D (see Figures 1 and 2).
Tencent’s revenue and net profit both fell in the second quarter, mainly due to the downturn in its core business games and advertising, as well as the impact of large investment losses. Among them, game revenue in the international market increased by 1% to 10.7 billion yuan, game revenue in the local market fell by 1% to 31.8 billion yuan, and online advertising revenue fell by 18% year-on-year to 18.6 billion yuan. Other businesses that maintained growth, such as social network revenue increased 1% to 29.2 billion yuan, and financial technology and enterprise services increased 1% to 42.2 billion yuan, but the growth rate of the latter slowed down.
On the company’s conference call on the day of Tencent’s earnings release, company executives made it clear that game-related regulation and approvals are showing positive signs, and investors can look forward to a healthier development of the entire industry in the future. At the same time, by controlling costs and improving efficiency, the company is expected to grow again in the coming quarters.
In this regard, Chen Da, executive director of Hehe Capital (Hong Kong), told the “Red Weekly” that Tencent is likely to present a relatively good data in the third quarter, “because both game data and advertising data have been shown since the end of June. Good sign.”
Tao Xujun, director of Nomura Research Institute’s Digital Competence Center, also has a positive attitude towards Tencent’s game business. He believes that games are related to population. Although China’s total population is declining, the penetration rate of gamers is far from being exhausted. Therefore, it is expected that it will take 10 to 15 years for the overall consumption energy level to decline, which is obviously invisible now. At the same time, Tao Xujun said that in the environment of consumption downgrade, the development of home culture is more obvious to some extent, the reason is that compared with going out for shopping, shopping, watching movies or traveling, the “Krypton Gold” of games is affected. relatively lower.
The well-known blogger @ Yufeng, who focuses on Internet investment, has a relatively conservative view. He told Red Weekly that Tencent is still in the process of bottoming out and stabilizing. He said that there is no problem with Tencent’s foundation, and it can be done slowly to stabilize, but the company may not be in a hurry to stabilize its performance, because it will not easily become the target of public criticism. And judging from the latest interim report, the profit has basically stabilized, which should be a signal that the future revenue and profit levels will remain generally stable or slowly decline, and then fluctuate slightly up and down.
Similarly, Ali’s main e-commerce business also has the problem of peak traffic. “Red Weekly” combed and compared and found that Ali’s Chinese commercial business (including Taobao, Tmall, Taocaicai, Hema, Tmall Supermarket, Sun Art Retail, etc.) ), the performance of its revenue growth rate is highly matched with user activity. The data shows that Ali’s global annual active users, Chinese users, overseas users and global commercial transaction value (GMV) in fiscal year 2021 increased by 17.81%, 14.23%, 33.33% and 15.11% respectively year-on-year. By fiscal year 2022, these figures are 15.83%, 12.79%, 27.08% and 2.44%, all decreased (see attached table).
In this regard, Chen Da pointed out to “Red Weekly” that the dividend of the Internet has reached the ceiling. There are a total of 1.4 billion people in China and 1 billion netizens, and the penetration rate will be difficult to increase after that. Ali CEO Zhang Yong also said, “Ali has achieved the goal of serving 1 billion domestic consumers, and will focus on the growth of the share of different consumer groups in the future, rather than pursuing the absolute growth of domestic users.”
Ali’s revenue in fiscal year 2022 is ranked The second place is the cloud business, which achieved revenue of 74.568 billion yuan, accounting for 9% of the company’s total revenue. In both fiscal years 2020 and 2021, this data is 8%. Against the background of the accelerating expansion of the global cloud computing market, Alibaba Cloud’s growth is also considerable.
”Red Weekly” conservatively calculated, assuming that Ali only has two businesses in China, commerce and cloud, and the operating net profit margin in the next 10 years is still 10%, Ali’s net profit in fiscal year 2032 (assuming it is equivalent to 2031) will be 155.426 billion. Yuan. At present, the latest price-earnings ratio of Ali Hong Kong stocks is 40.4 times, and the company’s valuation should be 7.22 trillion Hong Kong dollars. If calculated according to the static price-earnings ratio of 15.9 times, the company’s valuation should also reach 2.84 trillion Hong Kong dollars, which is also higher than Ali’s current valuation.
ByteDance, Kuaishou, etc. are difficult to subvert the leadership of Tencent and Ali. Actions such as withdrawing funds and laying off employees are actually strengthening the basic market of “Teng’er”
ByteDance has a certain influence on Tencent and Ali, but it does not constitute a threat of overwhelm. And whether Tencent and Alibaba are actively or passively shrinking their fronts, it is likely because of the practical need to shift from investing in the C-side to the B-side.
At a time when performance and valuations are hovering at a low level, the market’s worries actually include that competitors may adjust the industry positions of Tencent and Alibaba, as well as the continuous contraction of these two companies in the past two years, including the sale of some well-known companies. , cut staff and lines of business, etc.
At present, some Internet companies such as ByteDance (Douyin), Mihayou, and Kuaishou are still continuing to gain fans, forming new models such as short video culture and live broadcast delivery. These models have robbed a lot of traffic and also impacted Traditional online advertising and e-commerce business.
In this regard, Ma Zhe pointed out to “Red Weekly” that ByteDance has indeed had a certain impact on Tencent and Alibaba. For Tencent, ByteDance has gradually become China’s largest commercial advertising platform by grabbing traffic; for Alibaba, ByteDance has intervened in live broadcast e-commerce and monetized through live broadcast e-commerce traffic, posing a threat to Taobao and Tmall. But there is no doubt that Tencent and Ali have established a very strong moat. Even if ByteDance has a certain impact on the two companies, it does not constitute a threat of overwhelm. The final result is coexistence and development. “Take ByteDance and Tencent as examples. The essence of the two companies is different. ByteDance connects people and information, similar to Baidu. The difference is that Baidu is a search engine, and ByteDance is a recommendation engine. . And companies that connect people and information will become natural advertising platforms. Advertisements posted by big Vs followed by millions of people on Douyin will soon be seen by all followers. Tencent connects people to people, His stickiness is stronger, but the advertising effect is relatively poor. After all, a few hundred WeChat users are not on the same order of magnitude as the millions of Douyin fans.”
The chief overseas researcher of the aforementioned securities research institute also has similarities. View. She pointed out to “Red Weekly”, “I think the influence of live broadcast e-commerce represented by Douyin and Kuaishou on Ali and other shelf e-commerce is relatively limited, and the future impact will be marginally diminishing. Because from the big logic point of view, they It is the product that finds people, that is, the push of video streams, which actively pushes the corresponding products to users, while traditional e-commerce such as Taobao is more about people looking for products. At the same time, based on the perspective of traffic distribution, Douyin, Kuaishou, etc. The ceiling of live broadcast e-commerce is relatively clear. Looking forward, the e-commerce traffic dividend will gradually decline. Therefore, their marginal impact on Ali is actually declining. We believe that the market share of traditional e-commerce represented by Ali will continue to rise. relatively stable.”
In addition, in the game field, “Yuan Shen”, which was launched by Mihayou at the end of 2020, has become a big dark horse so far. The company has even surpassed Tencent’s overseas sales for some time, which has also caused the market to worry about Tencent’s game business. . Tao Xujun said that Mihayou’s “Yuan Shen” is very different from Tencent’s games. It belongs to heavy-duty games, but heavy-duty games are not the most profitable and best at Tencent. Overlay some small originality. And from the market point of view, the largest market for “Genshin Impact” is in Japan rather than China. Based on the population of 125 million in Japan and the population of 1.4 billion in China, its annual income and paying users are almost the same, so Mihayou’s ” Genshin Impact is just that overseas markets are developing better than Tencent’s games.
Ma Zhe said, “Tencent’s advantage is that it has built a highway for itself. After connecting people, games are its toll booths, and financial services and videos are also its toll booths. Tencent has built an ecosystem. .It is difficult for a small company’s explosive game to compete with Tencent’s entire ecosystem. Their toll booths are isolated. Even if the service is better and more popular for a certain period of time, it is difficult to resist Tencent’s several toll booths. ”
Compared to the external factor of competition, is the business contraction of Tencent and Ali in the past two years the starting point of their recession? Among them, Tencent has changed from an important shareholder of some well-known companies to a general shareholder. For example, Tencent transferred the shares of Heilan Home at a discount of 7.93%, reduced its holdings of 460 million shares of JD.com with dividends, and on August 16, it was announced that it planned to sell all the shares of Meituan.
In this regard, Yufeng said that in the heyday of Tencent, the valuation of the equity part was about more than 2 trillion yuan. If it can be called an investment institution, it basically belongs to the situation where the real business and investment funds each account for half of the country. But now, whether it is domestic policy or the general environment of the global financial market, it is difficult to support this model to continue. Big factories have entered a contraction cycle. At this time, they need to release their equity and shrink their fronts.
Yufeng said, “We must admit that Tencent itself has excellent investment capabilities. The current situation is mostly passive, in order to cope with some external environments. In fact, Tencent and Ali are not short of money. If they can choose, many investment Tencent must be willing to continue to hold it. And if the external environment becomes more relaxed in the future, many things can be done again. Relatively speaking, Ali’s investment performance is relatively average, and it has little positive impact on valuation.
Tao Xujun also believes, “Strategically speaking, holding the equity of these companies is to expand the territory, and once it fails, the first thing to be abandoned must be the periphery of the external network . Walls. Doors and windows are naturally torn down if they are broken, and new ones can be replaced in the future. Ali reduced its holdings of Guangguang Media and Mango Supermedia, but did not completely withdraw from entertainment. Ali Music and Ali Film and Television were all there, but they took away some unfavorable ones. Too profitable sector. After all, it has too many territories. The same is true for Tencent. It acquired Heilan Home for offline scenarios. But if the bleeding point should be abandoned, it will be abandoned.”
Overseas research of the above-mentioned securities research institute The chief told “Red Weekly”, “In our opinion, Tencent and Ali are not shrinking the investment territory, but more in response to the advocacy of less volume in the C-end field. At present, the domestic C-end traffic dividend is Gradually entering the second half, excessive involution is not conducive to social and economic innovation and development. Or based on this background, companies with a pattern such as Tencent and Ali began to switch from invoicing and investment to the direction of enterprise services and technology. It is very likely that Tencent and Alibaba feel that these are already relatively mature projects on the C-side when they reduce their holdings in companies such as JD.com
. Very fast. For example, Alibaba’s cloud is already the leading international manufacturer in China, and its technology can basically compete with international giants. Relatively speaking, Tencent’s layout in this area is weaker. Because Alibaba’s initial positioning is It is more inclined to the B-end, so its entire organizational structure has a very strong execution power on the B-end. Tencent has been doing the C-end, so it still needs to practice for the B-end.” The head of overseas research at the Securities Research Institute further stated.
In addition to this, Tencent and Ali have been laying off employees. In particular, after some emerging business teams that are considered to be “breaking the circle” of Tencent and Ali have been greatly reduced, the market has a view that the growth of these two companies may not be enough. will be damaged. For example, Tencent’s financial report shows that as of the end of June, the number of employees in the company decreased by about 5,500 compared with the end of March, to about 110,000. This is the first time since 2014 that the quarterly number has declined.
Yufeng believes that layoffs may be viewed from both pros and cons. Timely slimming is not a bad thing for the company itself to reduce costs and increase efficiency. It can make employees more motivated to work and prevent them from becoming large nursing homes. This is more positive. aspect. From a negative point of view, in fact, for these large companies, there is always a part of business investment, which is burned to those projects with potential but no short-term results can be seen now. During this wave of optimization, these projects will be prioritized for removal. In the long run, it is actually a blow to the innovation ability of enterprises and the pace of future exploration and experimentation. For the development of the entire Chinese Internet industry, it may not be a particularly good thing.
Duan Yongping “slowly buys” Charlie Munger “locks up” Ali on Tencent’s “fixed investment” Tencent and Alibaba
Regarding the rhythm of “scheduled investment” Tencent and Ali, the methods of well-known investors are very different. Among them, Duan Yongping opened a position in Tencent as early as 2018, and continued to increase his position this year; Charlie Munger’s investment in Ali is in a stable “lock-up” In the second quarter, Hillhouse Capital and Jinglin Assets built new positions or added a large amount of positions to Ali, and the meaning of “buying the bottom” is obvious.
Because the valuation is low and the fundamentals have not changed fundamentally, the above-mentioned investors believe that they can make “scheduled investments” in Tencent and Ali. Chen Da admitted to “Red Weekly”, “Although the valuations of these two companies are too low, I do not recommend investors to ‘buy the bottom’, ‘scheduled investment’ may be more appropriate. Just like in the 2008 global financial crisis, many people In ‘buying the bottom’ stocks, but this bottom is probably not the real bottom, such as Citigroup, etc. are frequently hitting new lows, and they did not improve until the end of 2012. Therefore, as long as you believe that companies such as Tencent will not die, you will decide to invest; If you think Tencent will die, but China’s Internet will not die, you should invest in industry indexes. Fixed investment is suitable for many industries, such as the medical industry, etc. If ordinary investors have confidence in an industry, but feel that this industry is currently affected by various industries Due to the influence of these factors and the valuation is very low, it is a good strategy to diversify the fixed investment index.”
Among the investors of “fixed investment” Tencent, the more well-known investor is Duan Yongping (@大道无形我 Shape). It is understood that Duan Yongping’s first position in Tencent (ADR, the same below) may have been in 2018, and since 2018, Tencent’s average price has been around HK$400 per share. On August 4 this year, according to Duan Yongping, he has increased his positions in Tencent six times in the last three months, and the increase prices were HK$344/share, HK$385/share, HK$377/share, HK$371/share, and 362 HKD/share. HKD/share and HKD310/share. At the same time, Duan Yongping said, “The book has finally started to lose money.” As of the close on August 4, Tencent reported HK$312/share, which means that Duan Yongping’s position cost is likely to be in the range of HK$312/share to HK$400/share.
It should be pointed out that although Duan Yongping’s current position is not high, despite the frequent announcements to increase Tencent’s position, his current position in Tencent is less than 1%. In this regard, Duan Yongping said, “Tencent is indeed a lot less certain for me than Apple, which is why I have not made up my mind to buy more at this stage. However, Tencent is still not for sale to me, and I need to find a business model. A good company is not easy. I guess I will have the opportunity to further increase my position in Tencent in the next few years, and there are indeed some things that I haven’t figured out.”
There are also Southbound Capital who also “favor” Tencent. According to “Red Weekly”, at the historical high of Tencent’s stock price in 2021, Nanxia Fund held 533 million shares of Tencent, accounting for 5.55% of the company’s total share capital. As of the close on August 16, Nanxia Fund held 721 million shares of Tencent, accounting for 7.48% of the company’s total share capital, an increase of 1.93 percentage points.
Among Ali’s well-known investors, Charlie Munger is one of them. When he was managing DailyJournal (Daily Journal Company, hereinafter referred to as “DJ Daily”), he opened a position in Ali. Although he has accumulated a certain amount of floating losses so far, the second quarterly report shows that DJ Daily’s position in Ali is the same as that in the first quarter. Although DJ Daily sold nearly half of Alibaba’s positions in the first quarter of this year, there is a view in the market that it has simultaneously increased its positions in some targets other than the US stock market, and it does not rule out the possibility of increasing its positions in Alibaba’s Hong Kong stocks.
In addition to Charlie Munger, some institutional funds are adding to Ali (US stocks, the same below). According to the US 13F documents, there are currently 1,183 institutions holding Ali. Among them, during the second quarter of this year, 487 companies have reduced their holdings, 525 companies have increased their holdings and new positions (370 companies and 155 companies respectively), and 188 companies have not moved their shares. In contrast, the number of institutions that choose to “stick to” Ali is relatively high. It is worth mentioning that Hillhouse Capital is a member of the new warehouse Ali. As of now, Hillhouse Capital holds 1.89 million shares of Ali, with a market value of $215 million. Jinglin Assets increased its holdings of Alibaba’s 936,000 shares to 1.243 million shares in the second quarter. Jinglin Assets recently stated, “Currently, Internet platform companies are in the ‘three bottoms’ of bottom performance + bottom policy + bottom valuation. Superimposed state.”


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After repeatedly angering third-party apps by cutting off access to its API, Twitter will launch a new app development platform called Fabric to bury the hatchet with scorned developers, according to a report.
The Information reports that Twitter wants to embed itself into more mobile apps and collect more data from mobile users. If Fabric officially launches, Twitter hopes it will open the doors to do that.
Once upon a time, Twitter encouraged third-party developers to use its feed. A shift occurred in 2011, and Twitter began to limit outside applications' access.
Courting these kinds of developers could help Twitter catch up to Google and Facebook, mobile advertising's heavyweights, the report said.
Fabric could also lure more people into Twitter's app. It would also be a result of an online "arms race" between Twitter and its competitors to collect data about people's activities and interests on mobile applications, the report said.
One of Fabric's features outlined by The Information is "Digits," which allows developers to sign up users by phone number. Twitter has also apparently brokered deals with wireless carriers regarding texting systems.
Fabric would be incorporated with two tools owned by Twitter: Crashlytics, a crash-reporting mechanism, and MoPub, the world's largest mobile ad server. The report also mentions a software development kit marketplace being built into Fabric.
Fabric is expected to launch at Twitter's Flight conference for development later this month.
Twitter did not respond to Mashable's request for comment.


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Nanoscale fibres with an attraction to fats were used to encapsulate fat-soluble ingredients and act as novel carriers for ingredients such as flavours, antioxidants, antimicrobials, and other bioactives, according to findings published in the Journal of Food Science.
“The manufacture of solid matrix containing nanodroplets could be of substantial interest for manufacturers wishing to develop encapsulation system for lipophilic functional compounds such as lipid-soluble flavours, antimicrobials, antioxidants, and bioactives with tailored release kinetics,” report researchers from the University of Milan in Italy and the University of Hohenheim in Germany.
Despite using predominantly non-food grade ingredients, the researchers indicate that the ‘manufacturing principal’ used in this study could be transferred easily to “other water-soluble polymers that have previously been electrospun and that are food-grade such as chitosan, dextran and gelatin”.
Food manufacturers are increasingly turning to encapsulation technologies as a way of achieving much-needed differentiation and enhancing product value. Tapping into key and emerging consumer trends with innovative techniques is becoming increasingly important for food manufacturers.
While the majority of focus has been on microencapsulation, more and more research is looking at the potential of nanoencapsulation.
Electrospinning refers to a technique whereby fine fibres are drawn from a liquid using an electrical charge. In this study, the researchers applied the technique to polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) fibres to encapsulate hexadecane-in-water nanoemulsions.
The electrospun PVA-nanoemulsions complexes contained up to 1.5 per cent oil and 8 per cent PVA. A range of analytical techniques including scanning electron microscopy, differential scanning calorimetry, and UV-spectroscopy showed that the emulsion droplets were indeed incorporated into the fibres, and were present as individual droplets or larger clusters (aggregated flocs).
“By incorporating emulsion droplets, a large variety of lipophilic ingredients can be easily loaded into the fibres' hydrophilic polymer matrix,” said the researchers.
The electrospun nano fibres are still some way from commercialisation, however. An existing limitation of the current method is the use of an organic solvent: “This is of practical importance as to date the only way to include a lipophilic ingredient in a nanofibers is by dissolving the lipophilic ingredient and polymer in an organic solvent followed by electrospinning,” explained the researchers.
“However, use of an organic solvent is (a) not feasible if one wants to electrospin hydrophilic polymers, and (b) use of organic solvents is generally highly undesirable in the food industry,” they added.
Source: Journal of Food Science
Published online ahead of print, doi: 10.1111/j.1750-3841.2010.01680.x
“Electrospinning of Poly(vinyl alcohol) Nanofibers Loaded with Hexadecane Nanodroplets”
Authors: A. Arecchi, S. Mannino, and J. Weiss


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After economic publication Calcalist published the list of Netanyahu’s annual expenses, the Israeli Prime Minister has been forced to put a freeze on his tax payer funded, $2600 a year ice cream deal, calling it “excessive and unacceptable”.
Netanyahu’s office has said that the minute it became aware of the list being published they swiftly moved to halt the agreement, which had been held with the Metudela ice cream store in Jerusalem.
According to Calcalist the favourite flavours of the prime minister are vanilla (predictably boring) and pistachio (which is down right nuts).
While the exposure of Netanyahu’s sweet tooth doesn’t help explain why he’s such a genuinely unpleasant human being, it does reveal a somewhat surprising personality trait about the otherwise extremely private prime minister.
It’s a wonder that when he was eating all that ice cream he didn’t get fat… Oh wait.


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A tuxedo that changed the world of fashion, shifting power from the ‘man’s shoulder to the woman’s’ is on show for the first time at a North museum.
Unveiled around editors and fashion writers from around the world, Yves Saint Laurent’s Style is Eternal exhibition at the The Bowes Museum in County Durham is the first time the French fashion designer’s clothes have been on display in England.
Pierre Bergé, now 84, who was the co-founder of the Yves Saint Laurent brand and life-long business partner of the designer travelled from Paris especially for the exhibition’s launch, which will feature a DJ set from band Hot Chip and a buffet from Rockcliffe Hall’s Michelin starred chef Richard Allen.
Seeing the famous black tuxedo ‘Le Smoking’ created in the 1960s on show once again in the French-inspired architecture of the Bowes Museum, he said: “Gender is important for many reasons and in 1967 YSL created that famous tuxedo it was the first time that we could talk about gender.
He said: “In a way the suit moves the power from the man’s shoulder to the woman’s shoulder.
“I am very happy to be here in the Bowes Museum. I feel like I am in France in the middle of a beautiful French collection.
“It’s a beautiful museum and it’s an occasion to show in England for the first time. I am happy that so many people in England will come and will see the exhibition and discover the museum too.”
The major collection of the designer’s clothes will run until October 25, and includes his famous Mondrian dress, bejewelled jackets, and cut out lace backed dress.
A bright pink silk cocktail dress made when Yves Saint Laurent was just 22 will also go on show for the first time. The dress was designed for a haute couture show and was presented to Princess Margaret in a private collection in 1958.
Adrian Jenkins, director of the Bowes Museum, said he hoped the exhibition would put the museum on the map and prove that major cultural events can be just as succesful when held in the North of England as in London.
Speaking to members of the press pack including staff from Italian Vogue and Tatler, he said: “We are absolutely delighted to be hosting the first ever retrospective of Yves Saint Laurent to be held in the UK.
“We were fortunate that Monsieur Bergé also felt that Yves Saint Laurent shown in a French style chateau in the North East of England was a nice idea and a wonderful match.
“We are looking to raise our international profile. Like any regional museum we are facing cuts but rather then go on the back foot we are going on the front foot. We are dealing with it by being as ambitious as we possibly can.”
The exhibition has been sponsored by DS AutoMobiles, James Cropper Plc, Fenwicks Plc and the Garfield Weston Foundation, and supported by the Friends of the Bowes Museum.
It is on display until October 25.


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In the spring of 1997, during a presentation in Paris on IBM’s new e-business strategy, the CIO of a major European retail chain mentioned that his company had just spent a lot of money remodeling their stores. He was wondering if they had done the right thing, given all this new economy talk. We were in the middle of the dot-com frenzy, and the buzz in the air was that in the Internet-based new economy, brick-and-mortar businesses, like other businesses grounded in the physical world, could not possibly compete in this fast-moving digital space and were therefore headed for extinction.
Similar questions were being raised all around us. In my local library, in whose advisory council I have been serving since those days, we were making plans to leverage the new Internet capabilities, such as introducing an online catalog and providing wireless Internet access in the library building. But we were also wondering if a library building would be needed at all in the future, given the growing digitization of books, music, videos and just about all content.
As it has turned out, the Internet, along with the overall digital revolution has proven to be a transformation of true historical proportions, propelling us from the industrial society of the past two centuries to a new kind of information society and knowledge-based economy. But, it has not quite worked out the way some predicted back in those dot-com bubble days.


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Crypto Gaming News
There are often comparisons made between the growth of esports and the growth of cryptocurrency. Throughout the last ten years, cryptocurrency has steadily emerged into the financial world, becoming a lucrative and massively popular form of currency. Once upon a time, it was a mysterious and unknown concept, but today, cryptocurrency as a market is dramatically valuable, volatile, and exhilarating.
In one swift move, we can apply those same terms to esports, an industry that is also experiencing explosive growth and gains in value. Today, industry titans on both sides of the fence are finding new and inventive ways to combine these two verticals. And, right now, the end results are Crypto Gaming and NFT Gaming.
This Is The Home For Crypto Gaming News
As these industries grow exponentially, there’s a serious requirement to cover breaking crypto gaming news. It’s an ever-changing world out there, and new developments and deals are taking place on a near-daily basis.
But what exactly is crypto gaming?
Let’s take a look at a traditional video game with a storefront. In many cases, you’ll either buy in-game tokens or coins (which have no external value) or use fiat currency to purchase in-store items. There are a number of drawbacks here: the items you purchase cannot leave the game, you cannot trade them for monetary value, and the tokens are worthless outside of the platform.
Now, let’s imagine a game with a storefront powered by and hosted on a cryptocurrency network. At the foundational level, this will allow players to verify ownership of items, to trade items, and to offer these items a true-to-life monetary value. Furthermore, and it’s a piece of crypto gaming news that excites players, you can earn money through gaming on a crypto network.
From Crypto Gaming News To NFT Gaming
We’ve mentioned NFT Gaming alongside Crypto Gaming, but what’s the difference? In many cases, there can be confusion, and the terms are often mistaken as being interchangeable. To define the latter, an NFT is a non-fungible token. It utilises the distributed ledger architecture that the broader cryptocurrency network is hosted on to verify unique ownership of digital items. Essentially, an NFT can boast an extraordinarily high value because it’s totally unique and cannot be replicated – proof of ownership is a button-click away.
Now, let’s apply that technology to a video game. When you unlock a specific item in a game, it can come in the form of an NFT – and you can carry around irrefutable proof that you are the sole owner of that NFT. Therefore, when it comes to putting it up on the market for trade, you could make a sizeable profit.
Crypto Esports Is On The Rise
The relationship between these two industries is boosted further by the sheer mutual potential offered between them. In recent months, cryptocurrency organisations have taken to the market to sponsor esports organisations, and vice-versa. Furthermore, many esports betting platforms, or iGaming operators, have started offering bettors the ability to deposit and withdraw with cryptocurrency.
On that level, it means that esports fans can win cryptocurrency gains for betting on their favourite esports teams. As crypto gaming news expands, these stories will become much more prevalent. Ultimately, crypto gaming offers a wildly liquid, dynamic, and ever-expanding injection of excitement into the esports industry. In the near future, betting and playing with cryptocurrency and NFTs will become a common sight.
Finally, players will have access to a seamless, secure, and effective way to make money through gaming, with crypto.
The best play-to-earn games, which are some of the quickly growing GameFi sector, are becoming more famous throughout the globe. Allowing gamers to have in-game resources offers up a range of new money-generating opportunities. The quantity of gaming options is speedily growing, and most of them work on both laptops, smartphones and tablets. Some of these titles are still to be released, and other ones have become available to [...]
What are MOBOX and MBOX? MOBOX is a crypto project that focuses on cryptocurrency games online and it has sparked lots of interest in investors as it is still relatively cheap. If you want to understand more about MOBOX, keep reading. Here is something that all you need to know: MOBOX is a platform for crypto games and NFTs Crypto gaming, which has grown in popularity in 2021, is a new focal point for MOBOX. By [...]
Welcome to our guide to the top 10 crypto casino games. We’ve roamed around the internet to find you the best casino games that you can play with crypto payments. This was a massive task as there are plenty of candidates for the best online crypto casino at the moment. Plus there was no shortage of slots and table games to pick and choose from. But after a long period of deliberation we managed to whittle down our selection of [...]
It’s been yet another record breaking year for cryptocurrencies and we’re here to show you the best crypto for 2021. While cryptocurrencies have received plenty of negative attention, there is no doubting the fact that these represent some of the most exciting investment opportunities. After all, the value of cryptos like Bitcoin have skyrocketed over the past decade, and it’s little wonder that so many people are eager to [...]
Crypto Games and Blockchain Games – a new and exciting way to game? The gaming world is talking about blockchain and crypto games – here’s what you need to know! Blockchain games, crypto games, maybe you’ve heard of them, maybe you haven’t. But trust us, you will hear about them, as they’re promising to be a new, exciting part of your gaming experience. If you have heard about blockchain, it’s probably through talk [...]


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Even with no order, Wyoming does well staying putApr 12, 2020 By Clair McFarland, Staff Writer
By Clair McFarland
Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon congratulated Wyomingites during the week for staying put during the ongoing coronavirus epidemic, citing tracking data compiled by Google.
A recent "mobility report" from Google showed statewide movement for retail locations is down 37 percent since public health orders were put in place to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, Gordon said during a Wednesday afternoon press conference in the Wyoming Capitol.
Workplace visits are down by nearly 30 percent, Gordon said.
Wyoming is one of the few states that does not have a mandatory stay-home order in place statewide, but other requirements and voluntary actions have been in effect for weeks.
In Fremont County, there was a 17 percent drop in travel to grocery and pharmacy locations and a 27 percent drop in travel to workplaces between Feb. 16 and March 29, according to Google.
The report also shows a 15 percent increase in travel to homes in late March.
"This data shows that more people are staying home," the governor said.
They also may be spending more time outdoors: Google's report showed a 29 percent increase in travel to parks throughout the state, including national parks, public beaches, marinas, plazas, and public gardens.
Parks and transit station visits did not show "enough data" for a complete report, Google noted.
Some parks have been closed or restricted since the data collection began.
Google says it created the compilation of people's movements within 131 countries worldwide to help public health officials monitor responses to stay-home orders and other social distancing mandates during the coronavirus pandemic.
The report charts "movement trends" over time across retail and recreation locations, groceries and pharmacies, parks, transit stations, workplaces, and residential areas, Google reported.
More than 1 billion people use the location-services app Google Maps, according to a Feb. 6 report by Google. But Google isn't the only site tracking its users, Central Wyoming College assistant computer science professor Matt Herr said.
"Every single person with a smartphone is giving that (information) to their provider - Verizon, Union Wireless, or whoever that may be," Herr said.
Google is a "much larger aggregator," though, Herr said, so the company is able to track people "more effectively" using data from smaller providers.
Herr said Google filters out personal and identifiable information, and he doubted whether the tech giant would be interested enough in specific, personal information to intercept and use it for some other purpose.
"A lot of this boils down to trust," he said. "If you don't trust that the (provider) is going to treat you fairly, you should cease doing business with them."
Harold Perry, a former Microsoft employee and current product director at the blockchain gaming company Forte Labs, said Apple and Google both "anonymize" their information - because most of their consumers still value privacy.
He also noted that smartphone users have the power to control how much of their data gets lifted. For example, Google says its new mobility tracking system is anonymous and optional, and users may opt out by turning off location services in their device account settings and deleting location history. But turning off location services in today's GPS-navigated environment "will make life quite inconvenient," Perry said.
"The thing is, though, most people trade privacy for convenience," he said.
Herr pointed to Amazon and other marketplace sites, plus social media sites, which use "cookies" to track consumer interests.
"There is advertising being bought and sold all the time based your browser habits and your social media activity," he said, using as an example an ad for a bicycle appearing in one's social media feed moments after that person runs a browser search for a new bike.
Even game applications have access to location services, he said. Cellular towers, internet networks and Bluetooth services all get device location data too, Perry said, even for users who have turned off tracking option.
"Every server or website you hit is gathering data about you."
As for advertising companies buying data to predict behavioral patterns, Perry said those companies aren't interested in specific people, but types of people, characterized by algorithms.
"Whenever we're thinking of things like that, we think of a person - Google focusing on me sitting here at my desk - and that's really not the way we should be thinking about those things," said Perry.
Instead, he said, tech companies like Google "take all that data and aggregate (it) to build a big database of... behavior patterns."
Users are then divided into behavior groups, primed for ad campaigns.
"This is where things get spooky to me," Perry said. "They can start to predict what patterns you're going to take in the future."
And although those predictions currently are based on algorithm-classified "types" of consumers, Perry said companies or governments may shift their interests to individuals in the future.
Herr didn't think the large scale tracking methods used in the recently publicized Google mobility report would have larger implications.
"I'm not even sure how useful this information is at this point," he said.
For the reports to be "truly useful" in gathering information about the coronavirus pandemic, Herr said the tracking system would need to be more invasive than most people in the U.S. would prefer.
In South Korea, for example, people who have tested positive for coronavirus are required to download a tracking app on their mobile devices that logs their location and "ensures" they remain in quarantine, according to an April 7 story by the Washington Examiner.
"South Korea also uses people's cellphone and bank records, along with surveillance cameras, to track people with the virus," the story notes, and the information is publicized so non-infected people can track infected people.
"That's a bit intrusive," said Herr. "I don't think folks in the United States are ready for that - but in other countries it's happening as we speak."


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CCI Connects with Peruvian Textile Industry at Expotextil
CCI’s sponsorship of Expotextil, the second largest textile show in Peru, gave COTTON USA a direct line to communicate COTTON USA’s benefits to 22,000 attendees from Peru’s textile and apparel sector. CCI has sponsored the National Society of Industries’ Expotextil since 2010 to increase COTTON USA’s brand exposure in the local industry and boost relationships with leading Peruvian textile companies.
During the four-day event, CCI sponsored a fashion show featuring cotton apparel from local brands and manufacturers and a conference room where visitors discussed the latest news on global trends affecting the textile sector. Leading companies including Creditex S.A., La Colonial S.A. and Textil Romosa held one-on-one business meetings with regional and local buyers.
CCI maximized exposure of the COTTON USA program through an ad in the exhibitor’s guide as well as banners, brochures and notebooks distributed to guests.
Peru is an important market for U.S. cotton exports, with a total of 249,700 bales exported in the 2012 marketing year, as well as a U.S. cotton share of more than 80 percent in the Andean Region.
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Consumers Test U.S. Cotton Garments at Colombiamoda
CCI’s COTTON USA Sourcing Program featured 13 U.S. cotton mills at its booth at Colombiamoda, one the largest fashion shows in the Andean Region with more than 65,000 visitors from ten countries. The Sourcing Program has promoted U.S. cotton yarn and fabric at this show for the last seven years, reinforcing the U.S. mills’ presence in the regional textile industry.
COTTON USA licensee NO PROJECT joined CCI and Cotton Incorporated to introduce its new line of TransDRY® garments, which will launch in stores the second week of August. NO PROJECT manufactured its garments with U.S. cotton fabrics produced by Fabricato, one of the largest COTTON USA licensees in Colombia.
Cotton Incorporated’s TransDRY® technology allows fabrics to dry up to twice as fast as regular cotton and not become over-saturated and uncomfortable during exercise. The trade show provided the perfect scenario to communicate the concept, as 15,000 consumers tested the garments by riding bicycles installed at the booth.
In order to increase the visibility of the Sourcing Program mills and the COTTON USA Mark, CCI sponsored advertisements in the exhibitor guide and on the fair’s bags. Some 10,000 bags with U.S. mills’ logos were delivered and displayed around the fair. In addition, the COTTON USA Mark was featured at the entrance and on flyers, invitations and magazine ads with a circulation of 25,000 copies.
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COTTON USA Conducts Sales Seminar in Colombia
CCI trained 56 sales associates from seven COTTON USA-licensed companies on the benefits of U.S. cotton and COTTON USA during a seminar in Bogota. The session provided the participants with tools to improve their selling skills of COTTON USA products.
Pilar Luna, director of INFASHION magazine in Colombia, gave a presentation on fashion essentials and the relevance of cotton fiber in garments. The conference also presented in-depth information on increasing the chances of successful sales, based on explaining cotton’s advantages as a natural fiber to consumers.
CCI increased visibility of the COTTON USA Mark by displaying a banner in the conference room and distributing branded notebooks and pens to each participant.
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COTTON USA and Girbaud Unveil New Collection in Colombia
Cotton Council International (CCI) joined Marithe e Francois Girbaud to launch a Fall/Winter 2013 collection at an exclusive runway show in Bogota, featuring apparel and accessories made with U.S. cotton fabrics.
At the start of the fashion show, CCI broadcast its “Proudly Natural” video to welcome the 600 attendees to the catwalk. Live streaming video of the event generated more than 10,000 consumer impressions in Colombia.
CCI’s “Natural Hunters” online contest, utilizing a digital strategy mixing Facebook, Twitter and the COTTON USA website in Colombia (www.orgullosamentenatural.com/), boosted consumer awareness of the event. Participants uploaded photos of “proudly natural” fashion for an opportunity to go backstage at the runway show, based on the number of “likes” or “shares” the photos earned via social media. Eight winners went behind-the-scenes at the Girbaud by COTTON USA catwalk to meet with models and stylists.
CCI’s Facebook page “likes” in Colombia increased by 288 percent as the result of the “Natural Hunters” digital strategy, while the Girbaud page “likes” increased by 39 percent due to CCI’s involvement.
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COTTON USA Licensee Launches Colorful Children’s Clothing Collection
COTTON USA-licensed brand Polito launched a new collection of basic U.S. cotton garments for babies and children to maximize its retail competitiveness in Colombia. Polito used fabrics produced by COTTON USA licensee Fabricato, a major consumer of U.S. cotton fiber.
In the first ten days after the launch, sales of the new product line represent 30 percent more than the estimated monthly sales. Eleven Polito stores in Medellín attracted consumers through a mix of media promoting the COTTON USA collection.
CCI supported the launch with COTTON USA ads posted in two subway cars in Medellín for a month. Facebook ads boosted the message, driving consumer traffic to the COTTON USA and Polito Facebook pages.
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Girbaud Labels Apparel with COTTON USA Mark in Colombia
COTTON USA point-of-purchase advertisements and sales tags at four Girbaud stores in Bogotá drove consumers to the COTTON USA website and Facebook page in Colombia to share cotton fashion photos and win prizes. The COTTON USA Facebook page in Colombia has 2,365 fans and the website received 14,885 page views, including 7,674 hits in the last 15 days.
The COTTON USA sales promotion extended the impact of the catwalk co-branding with Girbaud, at which CCI and Girbaud unveiled a new U.S. cotton collection.
Girbaud labeled more than 2,800 garments with promotional tags featuring the COTTON USA Mark. The sales promotions at Girbaud’s retail stores, located in the largest shopping malls in Bogotá, increased consumer awareness of the COTTON USA Mark.
Girbaud donated 20 prizes for the consumers who shared the winning cotton fashion photos online.
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U.S. Yarns and Fabrics Capitalize on the FTA in Colombia
The COTTON USA Sourcing Program promoted U.S. cotton yarns and fabrics at the 25th annual ColombiaTex trade show in Medellin. This was the first show since the U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement went into effect, giving the U.S. cotton industry an added opportunity to generate business at the event.
High traffic volume pavilion placement ensured that the COTTON USA Sourcing Program’s 14 participating U.S. mills and their logos received exposure. The COTTON USA Mark was also featured on a double stand in a new pavilion at the show and on the 11,000 bags and exhibitors’ guides. CCI’s exposure at ColombiaTex generated $476,000 in earned advertising value for the COTTON USA Sourcing Program. CCI will monitor reports from trade generated through introduction at ColombiaTex but initial indications point to a successful show.
Cotton Incorporated conducted eight presentations on “Color, Silhouettes and Texture Trends Spring – Summer 2014.” Cotton Incorporated also led a conference on the “U.S. Retail Apparel Outlook,” which gathered 270 people from the regional textile industry. Approximately 15,000 people attended the show.
Ten U.S. textile mills participated in the COTTON USA pavilion at the show: Alamac American Knits, LLC; American Denimatrix, Buhler Quality Yarns Corp.; Carolina Cotton Works, Inc.; Cotswold Industries; Frontier Spinning Mills, Inc.; Hamrick Mills, Inc.; Parkdale; Swisstex; and Zagis USA.
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COTTON USA Western Hemisphere Sourcing Fair Connects U.S. Mills with Retailers and Apparel Manufacturers
The COTTON USA Western Hemisphere Sourcing Fair brought together nine U.S. mills, seven U.S. retailers, one European retailer, four Latin American retailers and 39 apparel manufacturing companies from Colombia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Peru. This was the second Sourcing Fair that took place in Colombia, in order to take advantage of the recent FTA between Colombia and United States.
Participating companies included: U.S. mills - Alamac American Knits, American Denimatrix, Antex Knitting Mills, Buhler Quality Yarns, Frontier Spinning Mills, Hamrick Mills Inc., Parkdale, Tuscarora Yarns and Zagis USA; Retailers - Cabela’s Inc., Casual Male, J. Jill, Lands’ End Inc., Nordstrom, Phillips-Van Heusen and Zumba Fitness (United States); Benetton Brazil (Europe); and Almacenes Paris, Falabella, La Polar and Ripley (Latin America).
CCI held a dinner the first day to welcome more than 110 attendees to the Sourcing Fair. P. Michael McKinley, U.S. Ambassador to Bogotá, Colombia, gave the opening remarks. The Fair included a conference session with a panel of experts from Alston & Bird LLP, A.T. Kearney Inc., Cotton Incorporated and Yiyang Trading. The panel addressed important textile and apparel agreements for Latin America and Europe, the cotton price situation, and an outlook on Western Hemisphere textile, U.S. retail and apparel, and Latin American retail and apparel.
Following the seminar, the U.S. mills and retailers met with CBI, Mexican and Andean textile and apparel executives in private meetings to discuss business opportunities. Over a period of about 10 hours, 700 individual meetings took place. Cotton Incorporated also supported the event by answering questions about cotton product developments.
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COTTON USA Sponsors the Eighth Textile Forum in Peru
ADEX, the Peru Exporters Association, organized the event, which attracted 210 key industry attendees including important U.S. cotton consumers. The event covered topics such as marketing strategies for the fashion world and Brazilian, Japanese, Danish and Netherlands market opportunities. Also, a panel of experts discussed the current textile situation in Peru. The COTTON USA Mark was highlighted throughout the event via the ADEX website, banners, and branded materials provided to participants such as notebooks, pens and folders.
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“Closet Share 2011” Analyzes Colombian Consumers’ Wardrobes
The first such study CCI conducted in Colombia examined four product categories: jeans, khakis, underwear and home furnishings. The study showed that 27 percent of a woman’s closet is made up of underwear, while underwear makes up 23 percent of men’s closets. Jeans make up approximately 16 percent of both men’s and women’s closets. Additionally, Colombians own an average of about eight pairs of jeans. An important finding is that the concept of quality is not related to a garment being long-lasting, but with how long it looks fresh. Respondents felt that if the garment “looks like new,” it is of good quality. For Colombians, clothing purchases are not planned; it depends on personal moments, the time of the year or a whim.
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COTTON USA Connects Colombian Consumers via its Promotional Campaign
The COTTON USA campaign was launched in January 2011 to establish a unique understanding of U.S. cotton fiber among Colombian consumers. The campaign expands on the “COTTON USA Goes with You” promotion. The website www.cotttonusa.com.co received about 159,000 visits, and more than 6,400 people registered on the database as a result of online and magazine ads, as well as interaction with promotional staff at shopping malls. The website educates consumers on: U.S. cotton’s benefits, the meaning of the COTTON USA quality label on garments, and COTTON USA licensed brands. COTTON USA also created a promotional booklet highlighting cotton home products and color trends provided by Cotton Incorporated. The booklets were inserted in magazines, reaching 449,000 readers.
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CCI Promotes U.S. Cotton at Colombiamoda Trade Show
The COTTON USA Sourcing Program promoted U.S. cotton yarns and fabrics at the 22nd Colombiamoda trade show in Medellin, Colombia, July 26-28. Twelve Sourcing Program member mills were featured within the booth. The main focus of this year’s fair was “Fashion Consciences,” a place for new designers, investors, consumers and visitors to come together and form new ideas about today’s fashion. Approximately 9,500 people attended the fair, of which 3,600 were national buyers and 1,500 were international buyers. A COTTON USA ad ran in Colombiamoda’s exhibitors’ guide, which had a circulation of approximately 27,000 readers, as well as in Medellin’s newspaper, El Colombiano.
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COTTON USA Sourcing Program Promotes U.S. Cotton at Colombiatex
The COTTON USA Sourcing Program welcomed two new members to its program during the 23rd annual Colombiatex trade show in Medellín. Seven members of the COTTON USA Sourcing Program displayed samples of their products at the COTTON USA pavilion, which highlighted the benefits of U.S. cotton and cotton products.
Cotton Incorporated also participated by conducting five presentations on "Color, Silhouettes and Texture Trends Spring - Summer 2012." A second conference was presented on the current cotton price situation. Approximately 250 people from the regional textile industry attended the conferences.
The COTTON USA Sourcing Program held an industry event on the second day of Colombiatex where U.S. mills met with 61 representatives of the Andean textile industry.
U.S. mills participating with CCI and Cotton Incorporated at Colombiatex included American Denimatrix, Antex Knitting Mills, Buhler Quality Yarns, Frontier Spinning, Parkdale, Tuscarora, and Zagis USA.
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CCI Co-Sponsors Launch of Coltejer Fabrics Collection for Girbaud Brand in Colombia
CCI and Cotton Incorporated joined efforts with Coltejer and Girbaud to promote the U.S. cotton-rich denim and twill collection at Colombiatex, one of the most important textile fairs in Colombia. Girbaud is a high-end brand in Colombia that is a new COTTON USA licensee, and became eligible when they switched to Coltejor for its specially treated denim. The fabrics were finished with Cotton Incorporated’s Stay True Cotton™, Natural Stretch™ and Storm Denim™ technologies. The COTTON USA Mark and the Seal of Cotton were featured at the Girbaud booth and on the video inside the showroom. Ongoing fashion shows and eye-catching garment displays attracted a large amount of traffic at the booth. CCI garnered about $218,000 in free press from the event. The COTTON USA program works with important fashion brands, such as Coltejer and Girbaud, to promote U.S. cotton and to show the high quality, technology and style of U.S. cotton products.
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The Amak group opened the 2022 txotx season in the cider houses of Gipuzkoa on the 12th at the Gurutzeta cider house in Astigarraga. The Sagardo Berriaren Eguna (New Cider Day) kicks off the cider season in Gipuzkoa every year.
Xabier Urdangarin, mayor of Astigarraga and president of the Sagardun Consortium, presided over the presentation ceremony together with representatives of the Basque Government, the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa and the Euskal Sagardoa Designation of Origin, in which the new harvest was announced and a description of the characteristics of the apple, the sagardo berria and the most important events in the world of cider was given.
The cider 2022
The year 2022 is a year for tasting different types of cider. The 2021 harvest has been very abundant and thanks to this, cider producers have produced different ciders with different apple varieties, among others: single-varietal ciders, ciders made with 2 types of apples, etc.
In addition to natural cider, in recent years cider producers have been producing other types of cider, such as sparkling cider or ice cider.
The year 2021 has been prosperous and most apple orchards have produced a lot of very healthy apples. The summer drought and the heavy load of fruit on the trees have had an influence and some apple orchards have seen a slight delay in ripening. Around 5 million kilos of apples from 250 local apple growers have been used to produce the cider with the Euskal Sagardoa Designation of Origin.
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Product sales of brand new domiciles in the united kingdomt are continuing to go up despite considerable economic uncertainty, relating to vistry group, the countrys largest housebuilders.
Ive maybe not been this delighted because the start of the year, stated greg fitzgerald, the principle administrator, following the business announced its outcomes for the half a year to summer on tuesday. the housebuilder, formerly bovis homes, is attempting to sell 0.73 homes per web site weekly, compared with 0.61 houses a year earlier in the day the highest price we can ever remember, said mr fitzgerald.
However vistry swung to a loss before taxation of 12.2m when it comes to half-year, having posted a 72.5m revenue in the same period in 2019.
Its share price fell 2.5 percent at the beginning of trading.
Commensurate with others housebuilders, covid has actually influenced vistrys temporary financials hard, however it does appear the team is emerging using this exceptional circumstance faster than most, said experts from numis.
Vistrys forward sales are at record amounts, with 2.7bn of deals decided as at june 30 in contrast to 2.6bn per year earlier.
Federal government treatments the help buying plan as well as the introduction of a stamp task getaway additionally the release of pent-up customer demand after residential property product sales had been in place forbidden during lockdown, have generated a dramatic rise in sales throughout the business.
Barratt developments, another leading builder, can be attempting to sell homes far quicker than it absolutely was a year ago.
Two closely viewed indices posted in the past few days revealed residence prices had hit record levels, even as the united kingdom deals with its worst recession in contemporary history and also the prospect of rising jobless.
We have been a lucky industry: there are inadequate houses for folks buying in addition to government is supporting regarding the housing market, said mr fitzgerald. very nearly a third of vistrys domiciles are currently offered to buyers utilising the governments help get equity loan plan, which saves them from being forced to pull together a sizable deposit.
But you can find concerns the boom wont persist. make it possible to get would be restricted to first-time purchasers and local price caps introduced from april 2021, additionally the stamp task vacation, which came into effect in july and can save buyers up to 15,000 regarding acquisition of a house, is defined to finish in march.
I do believe we will be incredibly busy as much as march, then perhaps a slightly slow april, might and june. any products we aim to have complete by april, might or summer im asking to carry forward to capture the stamp responsibility vacation, said mr fitzgerald.
Travis perkins, the uks largest builders vendor, also reported its half-year outcomes on tuesday. alan williams, the companys main financial officer, stated it was too quickly to express perhaps the release of pent-up need should be suffered.
Travis perkins, which revealed in june it absolutely was cutting 2,500 jobs, about a tenth of the staff, swung to an operating lack of 92m, from a revenue of 62m a-year earlier on.
Shares in company dropped 7.5 per cent on tuesday morning.


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February 5, 2024 February 5, 2024 Jillisa Lynn Reynolds lived in Los Angeles for 11 years and Atlanta for three. It turns out Rochester is her sweet spot. Lightly filtered, but not pasteurized, Reynolds’ Hint of Her Honey brand “is the closest thing to the hive you can get,” she said. Read more.
I could not be more thrilled to have Murder in the Family back on REELZ for a brand new season! Of course shooting the series during the COVID 19 pandemic has brought its own set of rules and challenges. On the set, we are following CDC guidelines for social distancing and wearing masks. My mask is only off when I am on camera and my film crew follows safe practices for sanitizing their equipment each time they set up. Read more.
The coronavirus pandemic has severely disrupted lives, overwhelmed healthcare systems and caused economic losses worldwide. In the United States, some regions are experiencing the effects of financial hardship even more than others. Experts report that Michigan will feel the brunt of the economic crisis longer and more acutely than many other states, as it relies heavily on auto manufacturing, which has been largely shuttered. Read more.
Dave Portnoy, the founder and president of Barstool Sports, has launched a fund to bail out small businesses that have been hurt by the pandemic and government shutdowns. Reaching into his own pockets, he wants to help small businesses stay afloat and he is challenging others to join him for the cause. He calls it the Barstool Fund and he is using his incredible social reach to spread the word. Read more.


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Coconut oil is pure poison, says Harvard professor
- Author: Santos West Aug 23, 2018,
Aug 23, 2018, 3:41
The scientist argued that coconut oil, which is chock-full of saturated fats, is "one of the worst foods you can eat" and even went as far as calling it "pure poison". "What makes it of interest is the nature of fatty acids in coconut oil".
The lecture in German was given at the University of Freiburg and is now making rounds on YouTube.
The title of the video, which has over 400,000 views, is "Coconut Oil and other Nutritional Errors". Not unlike lard, at room temperature Coconut oil is solid and that's due to its high sat-fat content.
Coconut oil is a healthier option than choosing butter or margarine, but to improve your health, you're better off trying heart-healthy oils like olive oil, canola oil, or sunflower oil.
The proponents of coconut oil often point to the healthy lifestyles of indigenous populations in India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Polynesia, whose diets include large amounts of coconut. "This disconnect between lay and expert opinion can be attributed to the marketing of coconut oil in the popular press", the report stated. The video on YouTube has garnered nearly 800,000 eyeballs.
Another study using data from 135,000 people in 18 countries and published in The Lancet, found that high fat and low carbohydrate consumption were associated with a 23% lower risk of death. In a 2,000-calorie diet, that's about 13 grams (0.5 ounces) of saturated fat per day.
"But the reality is when you look at what coconut oil is made of, 80 percent of it is saturated fat and that's similar to butter which is about 60 percent saturated fat or beef fat which is about 40 percent", CBS News medical contributor Dr. Tara Narula told "CBS This Morning" a year ago.
"For most people, that's not going to be where they want to choose their saturated fats from", said Melissa Majumdar, a dietitian at the Brigham and Women's Hospital Center for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery and a spokesperson for the U.S. Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Another study found that coconut oil raises the body's levels of beneficial HDL cholesterol, or "good" cholesterol. The oil has "no known offsetting favorable effects", the AHA said in an advisory a year ago, and it could actually increase LDL ("bad") cholesterol, a cause of cardiovascular disease.
"For the time being, if you like the taste of coconut oil, then, as with butter, it's fine to use it every now and then". Their diet, however, also contains more fish, fruits, and vegetables than the typical American diet, which would make any direct comparison unfair.


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Kochava and LiveIntent Partner on Identity Resolution
Kochava, providers of an attribution platform for real-time data solutions for mobile and connected devices, and LiveIntent, an email marketing platform provider, have paired up to enable marketers and publishers a privacy-safe identity solution to transact and match first-party data.
The partnership leverages the 2,500 publishers across the LiveIntent network who reach more than 290 million verified people.
The companies will integrate Kochava IdentityLocker, LiveIntent nonID, and Kochava IdentityLink for a new identity solution. The integration enables advertisers, publishers, and infrastructure ad-tech vendors to onboard their first-party data and engage with counterparties for activation, targeting, and measurement.
Kochava IdentityLocker is a unified, privacy-first identity solution that enables demand- and supply-side platforms to onboard their own first-party data, prompt for user consent, and attach resource grants for usage on activities like deterministic targeting, while enabling permission-based rules for the first-party owner of the data.
"Where so many saw a rift in the universe with all the changes this year, we knew it was a great opportunity to create a stronger ecosystem," said Charles Manning, founder and CEO of Kochava, in a statement. "On the heels of launching our new privacy-first identity solution in IdentityLocker, our partnership with LiveIntent solidifies what we already believed to be true. We are thrilled to roll this out to ensure brands and publishers have the best solution to power their businesses forward."
LiveIntent nonID bridges publishers and companies to the ecosystem; with its 1:1 relationship to an email addressm, it connects to all identity offerings and solutions. Many of the top demand-side and supply-side platforms currently support the LiveIntent solution. Through this partnership, Kochava IdentityLocker datasets can now be activated through these existing connections.
"We built our solution for everyone who has already invested time, money, and resources into their own identity setup to see value out of that investment," said LiveIntent President Brian Silver in a statement. "Leveraging our nonID in concert with Kochava is a manifestation of that vision. Working with Kochava, we're steeling brands and publishers to thrive in a new era where first-party data dexterity is the key to success. With Kochava, we've built a bridge to the ecosystem for the first-party data that brands and publishers have worked so hard to acquire. We are the largest email hash-to-cookie player in the U.S. market, and Kochava is the leader in the email hash-to-mobile device space. Together, we'll be able to achieve unprecedented scale for our shared clients, and all in an easy-to-use, self-serve model."
LiveIntent Integrates with Rubicon Project
LiveIntent's Authenticated Bridge integrates with Rubicon's advertising platform for audience resolution and addressability.
LiveIntent Partners with InfoSum
The LiveIntent and InfoSum partnership brings an open resolution and addressability framework to marketers.
MediaMath Integrates SOURCE with LiveIntent's nonID
MediaMath's SOURCE integration with LiveIntent delivers scaled identity management and attribution.
Xandr Partners with LiveIntent on Data and Identity Offerings
LiveIntent's and Xandr's relationship is expanding to collaboration across data and identity.


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Android users love their expandable storage, and microSD cards keep getting cheaper while offering more and more storage. However, not all microSD cards offer similar performance, and some of them may not be recommended for your Android smartphone and tablet. That’s why the SD Association announced a new microSD card certification process a few weeks ago, meant to help buyers select proper cards for their Android devices.
Now, at CES 2017, SanDisk has unveiled the largest microSD card to receive A1-certification for Android devices.
A1, short for App Performance Class 1, is a classification meant to ensure that apps will run properly when installed on a microSD card instead of a device’s local storage. “The A1 spec allows the new card to manage random read input-output access per second (IOPS) of 1,500 and write IOPS of 500, so it can quickly open apps and process accompanying tasks, such as audio, graphics, saved profiles and in-app permissions,” SanDisk notes.
SanDisk’s new 256GB UHS-I card will be available worldwide for $199.99. The card is supposed to deliver “premium transfer speeds of up to 95MB/s,” which is pretty much on par with the company’s previous 256GB microSD card. But now SanDisk’s 256GB microSD card has A1 certification markings, as seen in the image above. SanDisk says the new Ultra microSD card with A1 “is designed to provide consumers a faster, more powerful app experience using cards.”
In late June 2016, SanDisk announced the world’s fastest 256GB microSD cards, including the Extreme (transfer speeds of up to 100MB/s, and write speeds of up to 90MB/s) and Ultra (premium transfer speeds of up to 95MB/s) models. If you happen to own either one, you won’t have to ditch them in favor of a card that has A1 written on it since they’ll offer you the exact same performance.


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The apps will carry pre-roll ads which will be sold by the Channel 5 sales team alongside the other Demand 5 platforms.
The 'Big Brother' franchise starts on Channel 5 with 'Celebrity Big Brother' on Thursday 18 August. Channel 5 plans to launch its iPhone, iPad and Android apps with the content from the first show shortly after it broadcasts, pending approval from Apple.
The Endemol-produced 'Big Brother' is a major addition to the Channel 5 schedules and for the first two months the apps will carry only content from the show. From October the apps will offer the full range of programming available through Demand 5.
Demand 5 is currently available through Channel5.com, YouTube, Facebook, Virgin Media and BT Vision platforms as well as through Sony internet-connected TVs.
The expansion to Apple and Android devices is part of a strategy to make Demand 5 available on as many platforms as possible and there are plans to add five further platforms by the end of the year.
Nick Bampton, commercial sales director of Channel 5, said: "The launch of the 5 Demand service on the iPad, iPhone and Android platform is further evidence of our confidence and ambition in building our digital platforms.
"By launching with 'Big Brother' it will give advertisers even more opportunity to reach this mass 16-34 audience."
In November Demand 5 merged with Five.tv to provide a single online destination for viewers wanting to either watch Channel 5 shows on demand or find out about its schedule and programmes.
Last week Campaign revealed 'Big Brother' will be sponsored by skincare brand Freederm in a multimillion pound deal.


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Manage episode 299658734 series 2968843
The Digital Banking Report Research by The Financial Brand shows that Customer Experience is the number 2 priority (just after digital transformation) for financial institution around the globe.
New entrants and changing customer expectations have fuelled this need for a greater focus on customer led design. COVID-19 has accelerated this trend by requiring companies to adapt to a fully digital world with no branches for customers to go to and the need to make customer support more efficient for staff working from home.
In this new episode we’ll explore why the focus on CX is so important; if new innovative firms still have the edge on their incumbent counterparts and what future trends we need to watch out for.
Andrew Duncan – CEO of fintech SOAR
Chris Speed – Professor of Design Informatics at the University of Edinburgh
Lotta Lindstrand - Senior CRO Analyst at Merkle EMEA


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Ever since Microsoft first unveiled its Windows on Arm strategy publicly in 2016, the only Arm chip supplier in the mix has been Qualcomm. According to a report by XDA Developers this week, that’s not coincidental; it’s because Microsoft and Qualcomm had a publicly-unacknowledged exclusivity deal. XDA says that exclusive contract will end “soon.” But will the potential to expand the suppliers of Arm chips for Windows PCs matter?
Many analysts and arm-chair industry watchers have been assuming because Apple is all-in on Arm, Microsoft, too, will be — someday. But Microsoft’s past — and some believe, future — is still basically an x64 one when it comes to PCs.
As Thurrott.com’s Paul Thurrott notes, it’s a much different landscape for Windows hardware now than it was in 2016. AMD is back and working with Microsoft on an Arm chipset. And Intel is under new management. MediaTek announce recently that it plans to throw its hat into the WoA fray by working with Microsoft to get Windows 11 on Arm PCs using MediaTek chips. Qualcomm bought Nuvia earlier this year and could have a better Arm-based PC chip offering in PCs (but realistically, not until 2023). And the end of the Qualcomm exclusive might mean at some point that Microsoft will support Windows on Apple own Arm-based Macs, XDA speculates.
I’m still skeptical.
While Microsoft has continued to plod along the WoA path for the past five years, it has little to show for its efforts.
In 2016, Microsoft wanted to give Intel some incentive (probably on the price and performance fronts, both), so it signed up Qualcomm to help build the WoA platform. There have been several announcements and a handful of Windows Arm PCs since. But that’s about it. The Windows PCs out there that have Arm processors don’t have compelling power/battery life stories, in spite of rather fantastical battery-life claims by some of the PC makers (including Microsoft). And Microsoft has struggled to get x64 app emulation to work on Arm PCs, limiting their appeal.
On the server front, things seem a bit more promising. Microsoft officials have publicly said the company has several server-side Arm partners (including Qualcomm) and is running Windows Server on Arm servers inside its own datacenters. Microsoft is reportedly working on its own Arm chip for servers.
To be clear: I haven’t heard any rumors about Microsoft throwing in the towel on Windows on Arm PCs. And this year, it got Office working on Windows 11 on Arm devices using its ARM64EC technology. I’m just not sure the promises of Arm are going to justify the continued investments by Microsoft and its partners that are needed to make WoA PCs a real alternative to x64 PCs….


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SCOTLAND isn’t known for healthy eating habits but is this reputation deserved? Dr Stephen Hinchcliffe examines how much fruit and veg Scots really eat and how our dietary decisions can affect our children.
In 2014, as in 2003, only one in five adults ate the recommended five portions of fruit and vegetables on any given day. The figures for children are lower still, with only one in seven meeting the guidelines – again, a similar figure to that seen in 2003.
But what difference does it really make if we leave the broccoli on the side of the plate? Probably not much this evening, but if it becomes a habit, the chances are it will begin to affect our health.
The Scottish Health Survey demonstrates a clear association between fruit and vegetable intake and self-reported health. While 81 per cent of those who ate four or five portions a day reported good health, this declined steadily to 61 per cent of those who ate none.
To improve our health, should we eat even more fruit and vegetable than the recommended amount?
Possibly not. One criticism of the five-a-day recommendations is that it encourages people to eat more food. Increasing your fruit and vegetable consumption is most likely to be successful if you replace your fudge cake and ice cream with an apple, rather than simply eating more.
When parents eat very few portions of fruit and vegetables, it’s very likely that their children will do the same.Dr Stephen Hinchliffe, ScotCen
The Scottish Health Survey shows that eating beyond five-a-day (or even four) is not associated with any further improvements in self-reported general health (Figure 1). However, we have to be aware that self-reported health is not the only health-related outcome and, as a result, it is important to look at this finding alongside other research. Indeed, other studies have found an inverse relationship between fruit and vegetable consumption, up to 7+ portions, and mortality from all causes, from cancer and from cardiovascular disease.
And then there are the concerns for what an individual’s own eating habits are doing for their children. When parents eat very few portions of fruit and vegetables, it’s very likely that their children will do the same, free school dinners or not.
Of those mothers of children aged between 2 and 15 who ate less than one portion of fruit and vegetables a day, only 1 per cent of their children ate the recommended five-a-day, while 38 per cent also ate less than one portion. Whereas, of those mothers who ate five portions, 27 per cent also ate five portions a day.
Paternal influence, particularly on sons, appeared even larger. A massive 64 per cent of sons whose fathers ate less than one portion of fruit and vegetables also ate less than one portion themselves (albeit based on a fairly small sample size).
The Health Survey report showed that diet, like many other health risk factors, is influenced by where one lives. Adults in the least deprived areas ate an average of one whole portion of fruit and vegetables per day more than those in the most deprived areas (a mean of 3.6 portions in the least deprived and 2.6 in the most deprived). Figures for children were slightly lower (3.2 and 2.4 portions respectively). While free school dinners certainly help in ensuring minimum nutritional standards for children, parental influence does appear to be equally important.
Dr. Stephen Hinchliffe is a Senior Researcher as ScotCen Social Research. His primary focus lies in health and wellbeing and complex data analysis. ScotCen have recently launched What UK Thinks: EU.


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Samsung may have competition for car audio system maker Harman International, one Wall Street firm said in a report on Tuesday.
William Blair & Co. said there is a a moderate chance Apple, Microsoft or an auto parts company will make a rival offer for Harman.
Samsung announced Monday it had agreed to buy Stamford, Conn.-based Harman for $8.9 billion, or $112 a share.
“The relationship between Samsung and Harman appears to be cozy already,” William Blair said. “So another offer may have to be substantially higher; given the premiums some technology firms appear willing to offer for the right strategic deal, however, we view the probability of another offer as moderate.
“While a no-shop clause limits the solicitation of other offers by Harman, outside offers can be entertained by the board,” the investment banking firm added.
Apple and Microsoft are developing autonomous driving systems that work with existing carmakers, as opposed to building self-driving cars.
“We would like to enable autonomous vehicles and assisted driving as well,” Peggy Johnson, the head of business development at Microsoft, said at a June conference.
“Harman maintains valuable relationships with automotive manufacturers, and its emerging technology in connected services positions it ahead of the competition regarding over-the-air updates, telematics and security features,” William Blair said. “As a result, we could see additional bids for Harman from other competitors such as Bosch or Denso, or even other technology/media players.”
Apple and Microsoft did not return calls.